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On July 4, 2005 the European Parliament passed the Resolution on Anti-Personnel Landmines (B6-0427). The vote capped a period of intense focus on the dangers presented by landmines, involving a June 16, 2005 joint hearing in the European Parliament, “Landmines Information Day-The European Parliament for a Mine-Free World”. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU commissioner for External Relations and Neighborhood Policy, in a July 6, 2005 statement to the European Parliament in Strasbourg described the Commission’s policy as designed to “‘to alleviate the suffering of the victims, aid their socio-economic reintegration, and to enhance local and regional capacity.” The two key European priorities as reflected in Parliament resolution above are universal membership to the Mine Ban Treaty and reducing the suffering of landmine victims. To this end, the EU has allocated nearly €850 million to date, making it the leading contributor to global efforts to reduce the dangers of landmines.

Background

Landmines kill or maim between 15,000 and 20,000 people annually. More than 80 countries around the world are affected (see map). Besides the direct danger to people’s livelihood, the threat of landmines also stunts economic growth as large parts of affected countries remain off-limits to farming and development.

In the mid-1990s, a network of activist non-governmental organizations coalesced around the International Coalition to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Aided by several sympathetic governments, the coalition, through years of work with the United Nations, national legislatures, executive branches and media succeeded in assembling a core group of governments determined to ban use of anti-personnel landmines (as opposed to anti-vehicle landmines). Their effort culminated in the 1997 signing of the “Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction”, better known as the Mine Ban Treaty or the Ottawa Convention. The treaty has been ratified by 148 governments from around the world, and although over 40 countries remain outside of the convention (including China, India, Russia, the United States and two EU member states: Finland and Poland) the ban went into effect in March of 1999. ICBL and its leader Jody Williams received the Nobel peace prize in 1997 for their efforts.

As its title indicates, the Mine Ban Treaty prohibits the manufacture, use, trade and stockpiling of anti-personnel landmines. It also calls on signatories to aid landmine victims, destroy current stockpiles, and clear areas under their jurisdiction of known mines. (A clause in the treaty permits countries to retain landmines for use in training or development of countermeasures and 64 countries have taken this option).

In November 2004 the first review conference of the Mine Ban Treaty convened in Nairobi, Kenya with 135 states present. The Nairobi Summit produced the Nairobi Action Plan for 2005-2009, which aims to eradicate landmine suffering, presses for universal membership to the Mine Ban Treaty, and also lays out plans for parties to meet periodically to discuss the progress of the plan. The European Union representatives included France and Poland, and the European Parliament has endorsed the Nairobi Action Plan in its recent Resolution on Anti-Personnel Landmines.

European Initiatives

The European Union has fully supported the treaty and has allocated funds to support the treaty’s ambitions. Between 1997 and 2003, the European allocated over €842 million to community-based anti-landmine initiatives – more than a third of the total US $2 billion generated worldwide over the same period, according to the European Commission. The amount includes both community funding and programs run on the national level.

The Community-based programs of assistance to landmine victims have been created by Regulations (EC) No 1724/2001 and 1725/2001, respectively. These form the legal basis for Community action – one (No. 1724/2001) for developing countries and the other, No. 1725/2001 for all other categories. Both programs cover the period of 2005-2007. Their goal is broadly defined in the regulations themselves: “Community action under this Regulation shall be aimed at assisting countries which suffer from the consequences of anti-personnel landmines, to create the conditions necessary for their economic and social development.”

The actual spending priorities within these assistance program, in turn, are being determined by multi-annual strategy documents. The current one, “The European Roadmap towards Zero Victim Target - EC Mine Action Strategy and Multi-annual Indicative Programming " is valid for 2005-2007, and has been written to reflect the goals of the Nairobi Review Conference. It sets three main priorities for EU Community action on anti-personnel landmines:

to reduce the anti-personnel landmine threat,
to alleviate mine victim suffering and aid socio-economic reintegration, and
to enhance local and regional impacts of effective mine action capacity.

Within these categories, the Commission expects to allocate €60 in 2005-07 directly through the budget line for EU mine action. However, the total landmine assistance could reach as much as €140 when contributions from other budget lines are included. Examples include EU funds for the UN operations in Kosovo or development programs for Latin American and the Middle East, some of which also include support for anti-landmine initiatives.

The Commission’s Directorate-General for External Relations (DG RelEx) is leading Community-based efforts. DG RelEx operates a comprehensive web site with up-to-date information on landmine initiatives under its purview, as does EuropeAid , an office set up by the Commission to coordinate its external assistance programs.

Key Issues in European Debate

Land Mine Ban: Not for Everyone?

Many of the discussions in the Parliament focus on bringing the two remaining EU holdouts into the Treaty’s fold. (Latvia acceded to the treaty on July 1st, 2005). Poland signed the Treaty but not ratified it; Finland has not signed. The July 2005 European Parliament Resolution on a Mine Free World explicitly calls on member states “which have not yet ratified or acceded to the Convention to do so without further delay.”

The European Commission has argued in the past that the EU cannot effectively work to promote membership in the Ottawa Convention if some of its own members remain outside of it. As the former External Relations Commissioner Christ Patten said in 2000, “Union’s powers of persuasion in seeking to achieve [universalization of the Mine Ban Treaty] are obviously somewhat limited by the remaining difficulties of some Member States in signing and ratifying the Convention.”

Poland and Finland, for their part, have argued that their security situation prevents them from adopting the ban until all their neighbors do so as well. A Polish foreign official said in 1998: “We will be able to [implement the treaty] when we see it becoming truly universal with the participation of all major powers as well as the countries of our region.” Finland shares similar concerns – in 1999, the coordinator of the Finnish Campaign to Ban Landmines stated its government’s case thusly: “Finland has a big neighbor, Russia, with whom it has fought two wars less than 60 years ago. Finland wants to have, and to give the signal that it has, a "strong, credible, independent defense”.

The Helsinki government nevertheless supports the overall goals of the Convention – it gave €5.57 million worth of assistance to mine action projects in 2003 alone, and has agreed in principle to sign the mine ban in the future. However, in a 2004 Government Report on Security and Defence Policies the Finnish government put off the signing, originally envisioned for 2006, by another six years. The report argues that Finland needs the additional time to develop cost-effective alternative to land mines, on which the country heavily relies for territorial defense.

Poland has signed the treaty and is in the early stages of ratification. The Polish Foreign Minister wrote in October 2004 that “although Poland has not ratified the Convention so far, it fulfills most of its provisions – [it] neither produces, exports or uses the anti-personnel mines in military operations.” The press release also stated that Poland plans to eventually ratify the Treaty.

Ban to expand beyond landmines?

There are efforts under way to expand the landmine ban to include so-called explosive remnants of war (ERWs) such as bomblets from cluster bomb . This anti-personnel or anti-armor weapon – in effect a bomb-within-bomb – consists of the dispenser (which looks ordinary bomb) and submunitions: dozens or hundreds of exploding canisters that are released from the dispenser over target, destroying multiple targets simultaneously (see a GlobalSecurity.org factsheet for more information).

Cluster bombs can present a problem in that between 5 and 30 percent of the bomblets do not explode as intended.Not unlike landmines, unexploded submunitions sometimes remain in the battlefield and have the potential to maim and kill long after the conflict has ended. The European Union has effectively taken the lead in pushing for an ERW ban; the July 2005 European Parliament resolution specifically calls on member states to “[replicate] the success story of the [Ottawa] Convention in other areas, namely in the domain of anti-vehicle mines, cluster munitions and small arms and light weapons.”

Anti-tank (also referred to as anti-vehicle) landmines also came under fire from advocates of expanding the Ottawa Convention. Anti-vehicle mines, while carrying a deadlier charge, are more discriminating – they are designed to be triggered by a vehicle, which makes them far less likely than anti-personnel mines to kill children and other non-combatants.

During the April 22, 2004 Parliamentary debate review of the Ottawa ConventionDr. Charles Tannock, MEP from the U.K., Group of the European People’s Party said that “this ban [cannot] be automatically extended to the legitimate military use of other munitions, such as anti-tank mines, as they, for instance, are less readily available to non-regular forces, because they are much more expensive and tend to be laid in a well-mapped and systematic fashion, which enables speedy clearance in peacetime after the cessation of hostilities. Furthermore, they are not capable of being detonated by the foot of an innocent child, as is the case with anti-personnel mines”. Caroline Lucas, MEP from the U.K. Greens/European Free Alliance Group, articulated the opposing viewpoint when she argued, during the July 6, 2005 European Parliament debate , that “it is vital that we go beyond … call for a comprehensive ban that covers all types of mines, including anti-tank mines and fragmentation bombs… just a few weeks ago a bus in Nepal drove into an anti-tank mine that had been put on the road by rebels. More than 60 civilians died. That incident – just one among many thousands – highlights the appalling damage that can be caused by modern anti-tank mines”.

The July 7, 2005 EP resolution adopted a compromise language: it called on the Member States to push for the broadest possible interpretation of the concept of 'anti-personnel landmine' to include all those landmines that can be set off unintentionally by a person, independently of the technical category ('anti-vehicle', 'anti-personnel landmine') to which they belong.

Timeline

November 28- December 2, 2005: Scheduled meeting of Nairobi Summit parties to convene in Croatia.
July 4, 2005: The European Parliament passes Resolution on Anti-Personnel Landmines (B6-0427), condemning landmine use.
June 16, 2005: The European Parliament holds a joint hearing titled “Landmines Information Day- The European Parliament for a Mine-Free World”.
December 2004: European Union adopts its Mine Action Strategy for 2005-2007, increasing the scope and funds for its anti-landmines activities.
November 29-December 3, 2004: Representatives from 135 nations participate in the Nairobi Summit on a Mine-Free World.
December 2002: European Union adopts its Mine Action Strategy for 2002-2004, focusing on 33 countries and allocating over €105 million for the project.
March 1999: Mine Ban Treaty takes effect and becomes international law.
December 1997: Mine Ban Treaty signed by 122 governments in Ottawa, Canada.

Sources for further reading

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